How to Choose Good Twitter Names

How do people choose good Twitter names? Here are some practical tips: where to start, when to start… even which characters to use!

Get a Twitter name, even if you’re undecided about Twitter

If you read my Why Twitter? series, you may be somewhat curious to find out what Twitter is like. Ultimately, there is no way to know without trying it. Twitter isn’t for everybody, any more than blogging or Facebook or what-have-you, and there’s no shame in that. But if you are still reading, that alone qualifies you as a possible fit — so go for it! Hey, it’s free.

If you’re still undecided, let me give you the nudge I wish someone had given me: There is a window of opportunity to grab the Twitter names of your choice, and that window is closing. Why did I choose “jonmreid” with the M, instead of “jonreid”? Because I was too late — “jonreid” was already taken because I dilly-dallied. It’s kind of like the early days of the Internet, when there was a rush on domain names, except this time it’s for good Twitter names. Sign up, especially if your name is a kind of brand.

Did I mention that Twitter is free?

Good Twitter names: things to keep in mind

Use your real name: Unless you want to be anonymous, use your real name or your online brand name. People will find you and identify you more easily. They will also identify with you more if you have an intelligible name, rather than a bunch of garble. If you have a nickname or “handle,” use that since these tend to stand out.

Case doesn’t matter, but the case you set is what people will see. For example, if your name is George Bush (and the name is available), consider using “GeorgeBush” rather than “georgebush”. Don’t worry about making it hard for people to type — because case doesn’t matter, people can enter “georgebush” and it will still mean you. Lowercase may make your name cooler and more “Internet”, or it may make it hard to decipher. Experiment and see which way is better. In my case, I decided lowercase “jonmreid” was easier to read than “JonMReid”.

Avoid underscores. Twitter names can consist of letters, numbers, and underscores. Avoid underscores! Even as I wrote this, I considered moving to a “Jon_Reid” account. But I pondered this question on Twitter and received a helpful reply which made things clear: For people who Twitter by phone (even iPhone), underscore is hard to get to. You want a name that is easy to enter on such devices. (It’s also hard to say out loud: “jay oh en UNDERSCORE ar ee eye dee.”)

Unlike the bad old days of the Internet, you don’t need to fill out the entire form and submit it to see if a particular username is available; just type something and it’ll tell you right away. What are you waiting for? Go sign up!

Twelper, thank you, that’s a good point I did not know in my early days of Twitter use!
Hmm, how to explain to newbies. If people like something you post, they will repeat it (“retweet” it), giving you credit by including your user name. The longer the name, the harder it is to quote you but still stay within Twitter’s 140 character limit.

I like twitter names that tell me something about the person and are not a blatant advertisement. When advising a business client, I would not necessarily have them use their business name. It would depend on the business. @NJInsuranceGirl is a client. She only serves New Jersey so I wanted people from NJ to spot her. I wanted people to know she is a female entrepreneur and of course that Insurance is her business. I’d be much more inclined to follow this person than @StateFarm

Deborah, thank you for jumping in!
Folks, Deborah helps small businesses learn how to use out social media. My tips focus mainly on helping individual newbies, so I asked Deborah if she might offer tips from a business perspective. And there you go!

Josh, a number of people have multiple Twitter names (for example, different content focus, or business vs. personal). But you can’t sign up for a second name with the same email address, so you’ll have to come up with multiple email addresses.

Hi Jon, I found your blog when searching for some general concensus on choosing Twitter names. I just wanted to say that I really appreciated the article above, and then I went to your about page and read about why you started blogging. Very cool.
Best of luck to you. If you don’t mind the shameless plugs – I own and operate this blog:http://www.SocialMediaAndTheBigW.com
My wife is also in the web development field and has her personal blog here:http://www.MakieDoll.com
Thanks for the info – again, I wish you the best of luck in all you do.
Jason

Hi Jon
I just found your site when looking for info about changing my Twitter name. I have a pseudo-name at present, which I set up in the beginning because my own name is too long and my first name was already taken. I want to switch my name so that people recognise me better now, but face the same problems. Any ideas?!!

Christine, you’re right: I didn’t realize that Twitter names can be at most 15 characters. There’s a good reason for this: Whenever anyone refers to you with @ and your Twitter name, they are using up a portion of the 140 characters that are available for a message.

I hadn’t appreciated until I read this post, and indeed now your comment, that your name uses up a portion of the 140 characters. I may need to think about the underscore idea…
Thanks very much again for your help, Jon.

Please note that Twitter says that your username can be up to 15 characters, while your real name can be up to 20 characters.
Some Twitter accounts set up in the early days didn’t have this restriction, but it’s there now.
See http://support.twitter.com/entries/14609-how-to-change-your-username for more details.
@bigpinots
P.S. If you’ve got a common name, then you’re often forced to go with something more branded.

Glad I could help, Aaron. I’ve actually had an underscore in my eBay user ID for some time, so I’ve continued to wrestle with it on my phone. You just inspired me to take the small step of changing it so it doesn’t have an underscore. 🙂

This blog is really amazing and thank you for all your advice! But I am having trouble with finding a name associated with me. I tried to use my own name lisamarie but that was taken and then I tried mslisamarie and even that was taken so now I have no idea.

I have no “handle” name because people prefer to say my real name. So what should I do?